College Rules
by Mingsmommy
Summary: The team talks about profiling, commitment and breakfast food. Rossi pays attention. Emily just wants to stay in bed.


Spoilers all the way through Season 4, though nothing specific.

Disclaimer: I do not own _Criminal Minds_, I am making no profit from the writing of this fic.

A/N: I wrote this, decided I hated it. smacky30 betaed it. I still hated it, just not as much but said I wasn't going to post it. She did not kill me, though I know she wanted to. Then alicat713 made puppy dog eyes at me and asked to read it and then offered a bunch of suggestions on how to make it…less crappy. I took most of them, then asked smacky30 to beta _again_; once she determined I was over myself and reminded me not everything had to be deep and meaningful, she betaed. So, if there's anything here you like? Either smacky30 or alicat713 should get the credit.

* * *

A series of severe summer storms have kept them grounded until this morning and they still have several hours until wheels up while the airport clears out backed up traffic.

"This is exactly why I like being with you via cyber travel, my darlings." Garcia flops into a chair in the hotel lobby. "I hate delays."

"Sure you miss the occasional travel delay," Hotch concedes, "but then you miss out on things like the world's best pancake place."

Emily knows they all have their weaknesses. Hers is Middle Eastern food. She always asks the detectives or local agents if there's a good place in whatever city they're in. For Morgan it's Chinese food, for JJ it's ice cream, Reid is on a quest for the world's best pizza, Dave has a ridiculous weakness for pastry, and Hotch and Garcia share an obsession for breakfast at any time of day.

Garcia turns a skeptical eye toward Hotch. "Seriously?"

Hotch nods. "Right here in Atlanta. We told you about it after the…"

"Oh!" She practically gasps. "Is it the place with the skillet pancakes?"

"That's the one," he nods.

She clasps her ringed fingers beneath her chin and looks heavenward. "Oh, thank you, ye gods and goddesses of weather and waffles!"

"So, you don't mind the delay?" Hotch is not doing a very good job of hiding his smirk which causes both JJ and Emily to smile.

Garcia looks for a moment as if she's going to give him a playful smack before she seems to realize it's _Hotch_ and just shakes her head. "The only delay I mind is you people lollygagging around. Let's get moving, here!"

Bags are packed and the SUVs are loaded and they are soon seated around a table in the promised restaurant, with Garcia taking deep breaths of the pancake scented air.

The hostess gets them started with coffee and waters and apologies; they're shorthanded and it might be a little bit before their waitress can get to them. JJ smiles at her, politely, "We're not in a big hurry. It's fine."

Emily sighs happily; it's nice not to be in a hurry for once. And it's nice not to worry about getting to a crime scene or a witness interview. They can sip their coffee and study their menus leisurely while indulging in small talk and the requisite teasing that happens when they are all together.

It doesn't take Reid and Morgan long to settle in to profiling the customers. Hotch and Rossi roll their eyes, but they always do when the two younger men start playing this particular game so nobody takes it seriously.

"All right, genius, you start," Morgan all but dares Reid. "Man in the booth over in the corner."

Reid takes a minute to observe. "College professor, history, married, slight OCD."

"Okay, I get the married, I can see the ring," Garcia allows, "but where do you get the other stuff."

Emily absently shakes a packet of Splenda. "The books on the seat beside him are history textbooks, and if he's a high school teacher he's late for school. And he has his silverware and napkin lined up precisely at the edge of the table." She nods and they all surreptitiously watch as the man begins sorting the sweetner caddy, putting pink packets with other pinks, blues with blues and yellows with yellows.

Reid looks around and spots their next subject. "Big guy, back to the wall, over by the front door."

"Aww, man, that ain't even a challenge," Morgan shakes his head in mock disgust. "Former United States Marine, recently separated, diabetic."

Garcia raises her eyebrows and motions for him to continue but he shakes his head. "No, you tell me."

Penelope looks but she doesn't seem to see what Morgan does. Finally she looks to the table for help.

Rossi sighs. "You know, this isn't a party trick." There's no real censure in his voice, it's more like an adult pointing something out to a teenager that they are sure will be ignored.

Morgan raises his eyebrows. "Tell me you don't do it with every room you walk in."

Turning to Garcia, Rossi supplies. "He has _Semper Fi_ tattooed on his arm, and he keeps rubbing his ring finger as if he's not used to it being bare. The thing clipped to his belt that looks like a beeper? It's actually an insulin pump." At that moment the man is served a large stack of pancakes covered in apple compote and a large side of bacon. "And he's going to have to do some serious adjustments on it." The man thanks the waitress, studies the food in front of him, then unclips the device from his belt and begins punching buttons.

They continue. So far Reid has taken the lead by identifying a single mother with at least two children (no wedding ring, marker on the edge of her sleeve and a _World's Best Mom_ key chain) and a waitress who is a recovering addict (old scars on her arms and a rubber wrist band proclaiming "One Day At A Time"). Morgan trails with a struggling real estate agent who is working a third shift job in retail (studying the book _Turn Your Listings into Cash_ and a crumpled blue Wal-Mart vest by his side). He is currently trying to gain the lead by profiling a young couple three tables away.

"Students," he nods sagely. "She has a backpack instead of a purse and he has ink under his fingernails. Art?" He shakes his head. "Probably drafting or architectural design." He studies them some more, obviously watching their interplay. "Probably a one night stand."

"_That_," JJ states flatly, never taking her eyes from her Blackberry, "is not a one night stand."

"How do you know?" Reid queries.

"Even I know that one, my darling boy," Garcia beams. "One night stands don't get breakfast out."

JJ nods, her thumbs moving across the tiny keyboard. "College rules. Breakfast out is the first sign of commitment."

Morgan's forehead wrinkles as he reaches for his sweating water glass. "What about dinner out?"

"No," JJ shakes her head, and hands the phone to Hotch, indicating something on the screen for him to read, "dinner is part of the seduction. Once the seduction is successful, there's no reason to continue with the romance, unless it's more than just a booty call."

Rossi turns his coffee cup in a slow circle. "What if he makes her breakfast?"

Garcia looks at him over the top of her menu. "Well, sir, that's, pardon the pun, waffling." Reid gives a snorty laugh and both Hotch and Morgan smile. Emily is studying her menu with enviable concentration. "It's thoughtful, certainly, but could also be interpreted as a further attempt at seduction."

Pouring cream into her coffee, JJ tilts her head in agreement. "And no commitment." She dips the spoon into the dark liquid and swirls it around. "Breakfast at home is eggs and pancakes and maybe another roll in the hay." Tapping the spoon on the edge of the porcelain cup, she continues, "Breakfast out is eggs and pancakes and hey, look I made the effort to put on clothes to bring you to a restaurant where my buddies might see me with you."

Garcia closes her menu and puts it on the table with her elbows resting on it. "It's a statement that says this is more than sex." She rests her chin on her interlaced fingers and quirks an eyebrow at Morgan who appears to be just shy of squirming. "You're saying she's more than a notch in your bed post. It's about wanting to spend time with her without the possibility of sex. First sign that you're after her for more than a booty call or FWBs."

Hotch hands the Blackberry back to JJ. "FWBs?"

"Friends with benefits, sir."

The waitress (the same one Reid had identified as a recovering addict) approaches the table at last and Hotch shakes his head, intoning dryly, "You young people and your modern lingo." Everybody smiles at that with the exception of Rossi, who is frowning a little as he taps his ring against the outside of his coffee cup.

"You folks ready to order?" Reid starts the order and they go around the table clockwise because, while most of their meals on the road are take-out eaten around conference room tables and groups of desks, they do this a lot too and they know how to make it easy on the waitress. Spencer can't seem to keep his gaze from drifting back to her rubber "One Day at a Time" bracelet and the rest of them pretend not to notice, because Rossi is right; it's not a game, it's people, it's life.

They talk about the case wrap up as they wait for their food. This was one of the better ones; four babies returned to their families, rescued from a black market adoption ring. Not their usual type of case, but the early profile had been based on the unsub being a woman working alone, leading to the assumption of pathology. Monetary gain hadn't been considered as motive. Still, four families intact was a win and any win was good.

When their food arrives, the toast that is supposed to be wheat is white. The waitress hurries to correct the error but it leads Morgan to tell a story about his sisters waiting tables when they were in high school. That leads to a rare personal story from Hotch about his first job at fourteen as a busboy. Emily is trying to imagine Hotch at fourteen, but she has the ridiculous image of a thinner, more boyish version of the man in front of her throwing plates into a plastic tub while wearing a suit and tie. She does laugh out loud, all of them do, when Dave supplies details of his first foray into the working world.

"Nonna hired me out to her friends. I carried groceries, watered plants, walked dogs." He snorts in memory, "One old lady, Sophia Nunzio, she was three quarters blind, couldn't speak a word of English, mean as a snake…I was her bingo buddy. I had to go down to the social club with her and mark her bingo cards." It takes the table a minute to settle down after that uproar, but he continues thoughtfully. "Playing bingo with a bunch of old ladies from the old country? That'll let you know in a hurry the deviance and viciousness human beings are capable of."

The ringing of JJ's phone breaks through the laughter and they're not headed home after all, they're on the way to Chicago and a serial killer targeting preteen girls.

They finish up and head toward the SUV and only Emily sees Spencer slide a fifty dollar bill under his plate. She doesn't let him know she sees; she just smiles to herself and goes outside.

***

The first thing she's aware of as she floats toward consciousness is the feel of something tracing lightly over her features. When she surfaces a little more she identifies the offending object as a finger belonging to one David Rossi. At least she assumes it's his since that's who she went to bed with last night.

She wonders why he's waking her when they don't have to be anywhere until day after tomorrow. Determined to ignore the digit and the man it's attached to, she clings to the feeling of being just on the edge of wakefulness. Knowing they have the day off from the horrors of the outside world, she's sure that if she just relaxes a little bit, she can sink back into blissful sleep.

Three weeks has never felt so much like forever. Atlanta, then Chicago, then home for less than a day. After that it was off to a small Texas town and a particularly nasty murderer who also happened to be a sexual sadist _and_ the nephew of the local sheriff. None of the cases had been particularly pleasant, but they did what they do, caught the bad guys, helped the victims' families with as much closure as they could.

But now, they have the weekend to themselves and she was hoping to sleep a little more before _randy_ Rossi started in again. _He might need to get a younger woman to keep up with him_ she thinks, lips twitching.

"Emily." His voice whispers over her cheek. "I know you're awake."

Keeping her eyes closed, she snuggles deeper into her pillow. "Awake is generous, Rossi."

"Prentiss." He places a kiss on her cheek. "Open your eyes, let's get moving."

She groans and rolls away. "Unless we got a call in I didn't hear, I don't have anywhere to get moving to." Hearing him snort, she waits for the next assault. Any second now he'll curl against her back with the less than subtle evidence of the direction he'd like to "get moving" pressed into her ass. It's not that she minds. Honestly, she's always on board with whatever he's up for, pun definitely intended. It's just that, occasionally, she simply likes to make him work for it a little, not to be a tease, but just to feel a little less like putty in his hands. And, god, it's sad how putty-like she is in those exceptionally talented hands. Really, she can't figure out how the thought can make her grumpy and wet at the same time.

Wriggling a little in memory of just _how_ talented he was last night, she waits for his next move.

However, instead of snuggling up behind her as expected, Rossi flicks back the covers on his side and climbs out of bed. She turns to look at him over her shoulder, as he gives her a firm pat on her sheet clad ass. "Get up, Prentiss. We're burning daylight here."

"Rossi." Rolling to face him, she leans up on her elbow. "What the _hell_?" She is trying to sound indignant but it's hard to maintain when she's enjoying the view of David Rossi's naked backside. He might be fifty-three but he's fit and that ass is a classic. "Come back to bed." Trying to infuse her voice with a bit of seductive promise, she lets the sheet slip off of her, just a little.

"Get up." He tosses her robe onto the bed and the sleeve barely misses smacking her in the face. Rossi appears to be somewhere between amused and exasperated and she is trying to decide if he was aiming the robe to hit her.

"Damn it, Dave." She pushes the robe off of her lap and pulls the sheet up over her breasts as she sits up. If they're going to argue she'll be damned if she's giving him a free show. "If I'd known I was going to have a wake-up call I would have stayed at my place."

Evidently uncaring that she is well on her way to aggravated, he laughs. He actually _laughs_. Then he disappears into his closet/dressing room, calling back to her. "No way I was going to bed without you last night, so I would just have stayed with you. Then we'd be at your place with me telling you to get your ass out of bed."

Anchoring herself more firmly in the bed, centering her weight and actually _thinking_ herself heavy, she doesn't speak, she simply glowers darkly at the door to the walk-in closet. When he emerges, he's tucking his shirt into his jeans and he has the gall to bitch at her. "Jesus, Prentiss, what is it with you this morning? Get a move on." The look he gives her is the same one he reserves for uncooperative witnesses and she has had just about enough.

Her first instinct is to yell, but she knows she's not effective when she yells at him, because he just yells louder. So, she sits, arms crossed over her sheet draped chest and cocks an eyebrow at him.

"What?" He buckles his belt and starts to roll up his cuffs.

"I was unaware we had anything to do this morning and I am **not** moving until you tell me _why_ I am moving and _where_ I am moving to."

Emily is going for haughty, deliberately channeling her mother, and yet, his expression says he barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes, as if she's the one being difficult. Well, okay, she is being difficult, but only because he was being difficult first. All right, maybe he's not being difficult, so much as he's being…Rossi: arrogant and demanding and bossy. What her grandfather would have termed as "cocksure", and she must be back in junior high, because the term, though it has nothing to do with sex, brings heat to her cheeks. _So, much for being cool_, she thinks. _Fine_, she thinks, _fine_. He can go wherever he wants, but he can go without her and when he does go, she can leave the bed of her own volition and put on her clothes and go home and sleep.

"Prentiss," his tone is the one he uses with people when he wants to intimate they are obviously possessed of a lower than average IQ without actually putting it into words, "I do not want you to be arrested for public indecency. Clothes. Now."

Her look, if possible, gets darker. "Why are you being _such_ an ass this morning?" She's going to have to hurt him, she decides.

"I am not being an ass." He sits on the edge of the bed and begins to put on socks, completely oblivious to the visual daggers boring into his back. "I am taking you out to breakfast."

"What?" She can't imagine what her face looks like. "Why?" He doesn't say anything and then she remembers. "Is this about Atlanta? The college kids?"

"Clothes, Prentiss." He rises to head back towards the closet to get his shoes, but she snags his hand.

"Rossi." She tugs. "Stop. Talk to me." He turns back and the look on his face makes her clutch the sheet a little tighter against the sudden clench of her heart.

It's not supposed to be like this. It's supposed to be no strings, stress relief, friendship, comfort sex only. But it's always been more than that for her, even before she agreed to the no strings, stress relief. She broke the rules before the game even started and she was willing to live with that. But the look on his face right now, so vulnerable, is more than she can take.

"Hey," she rises to her knees. "Hey, Dave." The sheet is pooled around her knees and her hands are cupping his cheeks. "It's okay." She presses a gentle kiss to his mouth. "It's okay." Her naked body presses against the cool cotton of his shirt and she wills him to look at her.

He rests his forehead against hers, letting her touch her lips lightly to his, her thumbs stroking across his cheekbones. "Tell me what's going on, Dave."

It takes him a minute, but he finally, almost hesitantly, slides his arms around her waist. "I don't know how to do this."

Her heart gives a little lurch and she's not sure if it's fear or hope, but she moves forward anyway. "You don't know how to do what?"

"I've never…" Stopping, his mouth purses in the grimace that is usually the precursor to someone getting their ass handed to them. "I know all the stories about me."

The air feels too heavy and it's pure instinct, years and years of using humor as a defense mechanism that causes her flip response. "Even the one about the stripper and the boa constrictor?"

The air lightens a little and he rolls his eyes with less than long suffering patience. "For the last time, it was a cocktail waitress and a feather boa and it was a _case_." Drawing back a little to give her a rather severe look, he frowns at her. "Can I finish what I was saying?"

Giving him a wide eyed, smiling, and completely innocent look in return, she nods. "Please do."

His eyes say he doubts her sincerity, but he continues anyway. "I know what our relationship is, but I've never had a relationship that was strictly limited to the bedroom."

It's a struggle to keep the imp of her inappropriate humor from pointing out that the one time in the kitchen, twice on the sofa, at least a half dozen times in the shower and the time she blew him on the stairs were not in the bedroom.

She's pretty sure he can read her mind when he gives a disgusted shake of his head, but he continues. "I know that I, being who I am, can't take you all the places I'd like to; not without drawing attention."

The look he gives her is so bleak that her desire to joke is completely wiped away. "I know, Dave. I knew that when we started this." She's trying to go gently, but she's a little confused and she hates not knowing what's going on. "We both knew that." Ducking her head a little, she looks at him. "I don't need that."

He frowns at her, then swallows. "The thing is, Emily, I want to. I want to take you out to all of those places, buy you dinner in some overpriced restaurant with mediocre food so the gossip columnists will run an item about a moderately successful author being seen cradle robbing a certain ambassador's daughter."

She laughs because that is exactly the tone she's used to seeing from the local poison pen (or would that be toxic tweeter these days?). A little bitterly she remembers all the items about him and his varying array of dates before he came back to the BAU. "Um, just for the record, I prefer your cooking to all that mediocre food." Smiling, she nudges her nose against his cheek. "I don't so much care about the overpriced part since you'd be buying."

He smiles in return. "Some feminist you are."

"I am a frugal feminist," she asserts, looping her arms around his neck, hugging him, pressing her breasts into his chest, gratified when he hugs back. "But, I'd be proud to be your arm candy, Agent Rossi."

He kisses her temple, rubbing his hands up and down her bare arms. "Believe me; I want to…take you everywhere but…"

She shakes her head. "We have to stay under wraps, I get that." Toying with the top button of his shirt, she kisses his chin, breathing in his warm scent. "The thing is? I don't want anybody to know." He frowns and draws away slightly and she gives him a little shake. "Not because I'm ashamed of you, idiot. Because this is…" she's aware she's flushing as her cheeks warm, "…this is precious to me." He makes a noise but she doesn't let him talk, "And I don't want to share it. I just want to keep it for myself, keep it between us." Laying her head against his shoulder, she closes her eyes and wills herself to breathe normally.

They stay like that for what feels like a long time, and she's just fine with that, she's just crazy enough about him that she'd stay in his arms all day if she could. She's aware his hands are moving up and down her bare back in long soothing strokes and she can feel his breath stirring her hair against her shoulder. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, they're on the same page, she doesn't want to meet his eye. After all, she could be wrong. Yeah, she's scared and she knows it, but admitting it doesn't make it any less frightening, it just makes it more real.

"So," he finally says, "breakfast? The place over on Highway 1? The chances of anybody who knows us being there are pretty slim."

"Dave," she smiles, drawing back, "I don't need you to take me out to breakfast to understand what you're saying. I get it."

"Emily." Sighing, he closes his eyes and brings his forehead back to rest against hers. "You have no idea, exactly, what I'm trying to say here." His words were combative but his tone was more frustrated than angry and somehow she senses the frustration is with himself and not her.

Gentling her voice as much as she can, considering her own level of frustration, she strokes the hair at the base of his neck. "Then tell me, Dave, just…tell me."

Taking a deep breath, he opens his eyes. "It's not just me being old fashioned and it's not just about being suave or seductive." He presses a kiss to her forehead and she has the feeling it's to keep from looking in her eyes when he says, "It's because I've given you less than I've ever given any other woman I've been with. And the truth is, I want to give you more than I've ever given anyone."

It takes a minute for that to sink in. Then she blinks. "Oh." Her voice is tiny and her stomach, she is sure, is not supposed to flip like that.

"Yeah," he answers, still not looking at her.

"Oh," she repeats, but she's smiling and she feels him smile against her. She's laughing a little when she starts unbuttoning his shirt.

Growling, he bats he hand away. "Prentiss, I am taking you to breakfast."

"Rossi," she resumes the task of undoing his shirt, "I'm having _you_ for breakfast."

That stops him for a moment and he finally, _finally_, looks at her. There's a soft warmth in his eyes, but his eyebrow is cocked and his lips are twitching. "You wouldn't rather have pancakes with syrup?"

Pushing the shirt off his shoulders, she shakes her head. "No, pancakes." Grabbing his belt buckle, she pulls him towards her as she tumbles back onto the rumpled sheets. "But the syrup is a definite possibility."


End file.
